While Amazon.com appears to have a competitive advantage over iTunes by being able to offer DRM-free music from the major 4 record labels, one major drawback at present is that it is not available to consumers outside of the US, unlike iTunes and many other online music stores. What is interesting is that consumers outside of the US have long been able to buy CDs from its US site, so it would be nice if they could do the same with downloadable music also.
Amazon is now feeling the pressure to launch outside of the US with it already receiving thousands of e-mails asking when it will be available in their country, so now they have announced that they will launch its MP3 service through its international websites this year. It is unclear at this time when it will launch at its MP3 service internationally, let alone any song or album pricing. Once Amazon does launch internationally, it will be interesting to see if they will only sell MP3s in countries the stores are based in or if they will sell to other countries also.
With Napster recently announcing its plans to introduce MP3 downloads, hopefully over time, all the other music services make their change, such that eventually all music sold online as a pay-per-download basis will be DRM free. However, so far the chances of something happening similar with video pay-per-download services is slim, considering nearly all video content sold today is protected with some form of copy protection.
